off with the judgment stuff.”
“I miss you, too. I’m just worried about you. Those are, like, the most reckless kids in the school, and they’re bound to get you in trouble.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
“How can that be? I don’t understand that.”
“We’re different, okay?” Bel said, her eyes in the lamplight sparkling with unshed tears. “You have everything figured out. I’m just trying to get through my days. Darcy makes me feel like there’s some fun left in the world, since Mom died. Can’t you understand that?”
Bel’s words hit home. Bel had been much closer to their mother than Rose had. Rose had resented their bond, and had felt left out. But Rose shouldn’t let that lingering resentment blind her to Bel’s real grief. Bel had taken their mother’s death much harder than Rose had. Rose reacted by trying to think about Mom as little as possible, and being grateful for her new life, where she could have a substitute mom like Mrs. Donovan. A better mom, really. Whereas Bel thought about their mother constantly. Rose had to admit, Bel’s reaction was the more normal one. It worried Rose sometimes, how little grief she felt. It was almost like there was something wrong with her.
“You’re right,” Rose said. “You and I experience Mom’s death differently. I take all my sadness and put it into succeeding here.”
“Is that the explanation? Because you seem so fine with everything that, sometimes, I wonder if you really loved Mom.”
Sometimes, Rose wondered that herself. But she would never admit to such a socially unacceptable emotion as not loving her own mother.
“God, what a mean thing to say,” Rose said. “That hurts. Don’t you get it? We can both feel grief, but show it differently. I’m doing my best to understand your way, and that you’re acting out—misbehaving—because of sadness. Meanwhile, instead of trying to understand me, you accuse me of not loving Mom? That’s low, Bel.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I need to try harder to see your perspective.”
“Thank you. I would appreciate that.”
“Let’s be friends again, okay?” Bel said.
“Yes. That’s all I want. I’ll get off your back about Darcy, too, promise.”
Bel smiled tearily. “Okay. Deal,” she said, and held her arms out.
They hugged for a long time, right there in the middle of the path. Rose had to swallow hard in order not to cry, which made her feel relieved. At least when it came to Bel, Rose still had a heart.
“Hey,” Rose said, disentangling herself. “I have Oreos in my room. Want some?”
“You know I do.”
They linked arms, and walked back to Moreland together.
By mid-October, Bel’s schoolgirl crush on Heath Donovan had morphed into something more powerful, and more dangerous. After their iced-coffee date at the Art Café, she just couldn’t shake the memory of their embrace. She still felt his arms around her, and wanted to experience that again. But how? She’d sit in English class and stare, letting his voice wash over her. Bel worried that kids in her English class would notice, and tease her. Or worse, that Darcy and the Moreland seniors would find out. If the seniors realized she was mad for Heath, not only would they mock her relentlessly, but they’d force her to play their tawdry game, which she absolutely refused to do. She didn’t even like hearing about it anymore. What they were doing was childish and degrading. What Bel felt for Heath was real. Bel now understood that Heath knew how she felt, and was glad of it. This amazing realization dawned on her in English class, on a stormy afternoon in late October, as they discussed one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Rain sluiced against the mullioned windows as Heath read aloud to the class from a poem about summer, and love.
“‘If happiness were like the flowers of June,’” Heath quoted, in his beautiful, resonant voice, “‘then I would take the best of them, roses and columbine, the lilies, and bind them in your hair . . . I think of you as the day wanes, and as the sun sinks deep into the ocean, and as the stars turn round above.’”
And just then, as the clock on the wall ticked to the beat of Bel’s heart, Heath looked up and caught her eyes. He’d been gazing down at the page, then those incredible blue-green eyes flicked up and settled on Bel, at the precise moment he spoke of binding flowers in her hair. Their gazes met, and held. Everything else faded away, and she was transported with him to a field on a perfect June day. She could smell the grass, as she had that afternoon they sat together on the patio, when she told him her troubles, and he comforted her. She could feel the breeze, and feel his arms around her again, his breath on her hair. And she finally understood that Heath Donovan wanted her to love him. Otherwise, why—out of fifteen students in the room, seven boys, eight girls—why would he look directly at her at the very moment he said those words? This wasn’t just a foolish crush. It wasn’t a one-way street. She meant something to him, too.
There were other signs.
Bel had joined the cross-country team at Heath’s urging, and he was teaching her how to run. (Okay, he was teaching all the girls on the team, but he paid special attention to Bel. She wasn’t imagining it.) There was so much more to running than she’d known. Form, pacing, strategy. Appreciation for the terrain. The sprawling Odell campus was situated in a valley ringed by rugged hills. The nature preserve, and its hiking trails, were their own private wilderness to train in. After a brutally hot Indian summer, the weather had turned wet and raw, and Bel’s afternoons were spent slogging through the muck on the trails with twenty other girls. They had practice five days a week, rain or shine, and meets on Saturdays. At first, it was torture, and she did it only to be near Heath. But as the weeks went by, calluses formed on her feet, muscles hardened in her legs, and she got faster, until she was keeping pace with the best girls on the team, and with Heath himself.
Heath ran alongside them on practice days. He was that kind of coach: He didn’t spare himself, even in the worst weather. He’d start at the front of the pack and slowly drop back, checking on each runner or group of runners in turn, giving them pointers, boosting their spirits. Bel made sure to run alone. She wanted to be certain that, whenever Heath caught up with her, they would have privacy. She’d get ten or fifteen minutes alone with him on a long run—more than he gave any other girl. They’d set a pace where they could comfortably maintain a conversation. The gray skies and whistling wind would drop a cloak of intimacy over them as they ran. Other girls might be in sight, but they were out of earshot, and Bel could say anything. She looked forward to these runs as if they could save her life, and in a way, they did. Bel told Heath all her troubles. He was the only person on earth she could talk to; with everyone else, Bel put on an act, full of snark and bravado. None of her friends or even her own sister suspected how lost she felt inside. But Heath knew the true her.
Out there in the woods, just the two of them and the wind, Heath listened like he really cared. He told her things about himself, too, personal things. As successful as Heath Donovan had been during his student days at Odell, he’d felt like an outsider then, as Bel did now. Heath got into Odell on a tennis scholarship, and he came late, not till junior year. As soon as he got there, his parents split, and money was tight. He couldn’t keep up with the rich kids—not even with Mrs. Donovan, who was his girlfriend then, and later became his wife.
That
